An Echo
by Raw-DiamondGirl
Summary: We sit like that for a while; a teenaged girl and a twenty-something man, healing.


"I hate you."  
My room's a mess. I'm lying there, in my loft bed, my black areopostalé sweats a size too big. The screen of my TV is a vacant blue, but I don't care. My eyes are trained beyond the screen, beyond the back wall.  
"What?" He's scrambling around his console, pressing buttons that I know don't need to be pushed, avoiding any contact with me beyond a single syllable.  
I flip myself over, resting my chin upon my hands, kicking my feet in the air. "I hate you, Doctor."  
"Why do you hate me?" He's only half listening, I know, so I give him a half-answer.  
"You know why."  
He turns to me this time, pulling his welding goggles off, before turning away. "I hate me, too."  
"Do you?" I never really believe him anymore.  
"Of course, I think about all those mistakes nonstop." The TARDIS gives off a beeping noise, and I smirk, pulling myself into a crouching position.  
"Rose?" It's just a whisper, but I know he hears it. It seems like millenia before he answers.  
"Yes."  
"Do you really?" He whips around again, a type of fire in his eyes, but the rest of him surrounded by a false calm.  
"Of course I do, Books, now can we please-"  
"Liar." I feel bold now, bold and angry and ready to kill.  
"Oi! I don't care what you think of me, Books, just remember that I am older than you, and I ought to be respected." He turns away, dashing in circles around his precious little console, and I pounce, grabbing hold of his pantleg and pulling him down on the glass floor of the TARDIS, next to me.  
"One thing you'll learn about me, Doctor: You may be older than me by eight-hundred-ninety-six years, but I am one of the smartest people in my country. I am nearly equal to you in intellect, and I expect to be treated as such. I have been taught to kill, been taught horrible methods of torture- Hell, I've even been taught crocheting. And if you're going to call me by a pet's name, be warned, I'm like a cat: I play with my victims before I kill them."  
He stares at me for a second, surprised. Then he begins to laugh; an evil, twisted laugh that contains such overwhelming bits of loss and insanity that it sends shivers down my spine. "Who ruined your childhood like that, Books? Who ruined you like I did to little Amelia Ponds?"  
I'm near afraid to answer, but it's still the Doctor, so I do. "Myself."  
"You? Why would you do that, Books, why'd you kill yourself before you'd ever lived?" There's that laugh again, and I wonder how I've just noticed how insane it was.  
"I suppose it was my intellect that did me in. I was so afraid of the world- I thought that, if I could kill it, maybe it would think of me as an equal. I can kill you fourty-seven ways with the pencil hidden in my sock."  
He laughs again, and this time , I laugh right along, because it feels so good to finally sink into the throes of insanity I've fought so long.  
And then, suddenly, it's over, and I still hate him.  
"Liar. You- You don't think about her. You don't care that she's gone." He stands, walks to the other side of that console of his, but he doesn't speak. "And then you went and just... replaced her. You got married, Doctor! That's domestic. You don't do domestic, you've said it yourself. Or is it just that old saying? 'The Doctor never keeps his word.' Yeah, if only they knew."  
"Oh, just be quiet, Books." He sounds different, in an Oncoming Storm kind of way, but of course I'm too dense to stop once I've started.  
"Why? Why be quiet? What kind of man- No, not man, that's too good for you. What kind of being would marry a woman he didn't love and have the gall to tell her he didn't want to marry her? What kind of person would leave someone they claimed to loved in the middle of some beach with their clone? Who would be so horrible, Doctor? Not even the Master would-"  
"WILL YOU BLOODY SHUT UP?" There it is, the explosion, and I feel proud to have finally gotten an emotion from him. "Damn it, Books! I miss her, is that what you wanted to hear? I. Miss. Her. Not a day goes by that I don't miss her. And then you walk in here, all high and mighty, coming and pulling out everything I've worked so hard to keep hidden. You're just a teenage girl, for God's sakes!" Tears have started to fall from his eyes now, and it breaks part of my heart. "You're just a child..."  
I pull him down with me again, sit him next to me, and lay his head on my shoulder. I wrap my arm around his shoulders, pull him close, and I whisper to him, "I miss her, too."  
The tears turn to sobs, and we sit there through all of it, a teenage girl holding onto a twenty-something man for dear life as he sobbed, silent tears flowing down her face.  
TARDIS hums a tune, and I sing along.  
_"I dreamed a dream in time gone by._

_When hope was high, and life worth living._

_I dreamed that love would never die, I dreamed that God would be forgiving._

_When I was young, and unafraid, and dreams were made and used and wasted._

_There was no ransom to be paid; no song unsung, no wine untasted._

_But the tigers come at night, with their voices soft as thunder,_

_as they tear your hope apart; as they turn your dream to shame..._" I drift off, tired, and he sniffles.  
"I could take you to meet her, if you'd like. Fantine." I smile and shake my head, falling into the hands of sleep.  
When I awake, in my own bed in my own room, a blue notebook in my hand, I realize two things.  
One, I can rest knowing he does miss her, even if he doesn't show it.  
Two, maybe I don't hate him so much after all.

_So, basically, yeah Angel had a dream. AND THIS HAPPENED._

_Why is my brain filled with so much angst?_


End file.
